Thursday, November 15, 2012

CONSERVATIVE OUTREACH CONTINUES. The "Ladyparts! Huh! We'll show you ladyparts" campaign for women's votes spreads to the Daily Caller:

“In his first press conference since the election, President Barack Obama challenged Republicans who are calling for Watergate-style hearings on the terrorist attack in Benghazi to ‘go after me.’ Obama defended U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose remarks on Sunday morning news shows five days after the Sept. 11 attack have been widely criticized by Republicans..."

But did you catch the sexism? Can you imagine the president infantilizing a male cabinet secretary that way? He basically suggested Rice couldn’t fight her own battles. She needed a man to step in and fend off her critics. Mr. President, you just set back women a 100 years.

My eyes stopped working good after that, so
I may have fantasized the later section where the Caller accuses Obama of holding a door open for Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE. Holy shit this is apparently a Thing: Fox News feminazi Kirsten Powers rages over Obama's "chauvinistic" defense of Rice, possibly burns bra. She also denounces the lapdog press over Benghazi, says "the White House press corps should have flown into a frenzy." Solution: Bring back Jeff Gannon!

You didn't miss much. Sad Said screed went flying off in a bunch of different directions, none relevant. (It was, of course, written by a guy.) Can you imagine the president infantilizing a male cabinet secretary that way?Nope. Can't imagine.

Yeah, nothing shouts "sexism" like indicating that you might appoint another woman as Secretary of State, regardless of how much a bunch of reactionary misogynist anti-choice grandstanding assholes like McCain and Graham barf out attacks on her "incompetence" for repeating what the CIA told her, thereby somehow retroactively causing Benghazi from her perch as UN ambassador. Judas Iscariot on a jet ski, don't these Daily Call'er a Slut for Wanting Insurance Coverage for Contraception people have a meeting of their local "defining legitimate rape" club to attend, or something?

When a man who is high ranking in an organization, defends a woman of lesser rank in his organization from a witch-hunt that is largely being launched at him in retaliation for his having been elected to his job, yet again; it is "sexism" for him to do so because had he not defended her he would have been "throwing her under the bus."

Who can tell which is worse in the mind of a wingnut? As a feminist I can say that if President Obama were defending me and my job that way I would NOT say, "Who's my Daddy?" in public.

It's almost adorable when conservatives try to do feminism. They think it's just "screech at a man for coming within 100 feet of a woman" or something. It's like some dumb bloke who thinks that forensic investigation works like on CSI.

Republican outreach is cargo cult by design. They can't properly execute the re-gender argument, because they have no clue was sexism looks like, but they know it's effective when used against them. For example: can you imagine the right directing the same level of frothing vitriol at a man for repeating a talking point that was only later proved inaccurate?

This is the Daily Caller that's saying this. The Daily Caller, whose idea of gender inclusivity, to go by the right-hand list of star bloggers on their site, is to stick Ginni Thomas (wife of Clarence) all the way at the bottom, and whose entertainment news prominently features "Judge: Jenna Jameson owes $92k over a movie called 'Zombie Strippers!'" and "Petraeus isn't the only one who traded up: 20 ugly celebrities with super hot lovers [SLIDESHOW]" along with their ten favorite sexy beer commercials. Tu quoque may not be much of an argument, but it's not as if they presented an argument themselves in the first place.

I can see where the Daily caller would be horrified that a leader would defend someone of lower rank; since most conservative and business leaders' normal behaviour would be to throw junior under the bus or say they weren't aware of what was going on, rather than take any responsibility.

You'd think they'd at least be better at tu quoque, given all the practice they get. It's almost like they don't understand the other side - like they've never seriously spoken to a liberal or Democrat. Odd, huh?

I saw some interviewer brace John McCain on exactly this point--he pointed out that many had excoriated Condi Rice for her "mushroom cloud" comments and, in fact, she had turned out to not know what she was talking about and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction so why was he bitching about Rice giving her briefing based on the best available information she had been given. McCain looked baffled to be called on such old shit and just began bloviating about how many respectable people had believed the same stupid stuff so the "cases are not at all the same."

I think it's time to stop printing pixels and reclaim all these from the Daily Bawler. They have hardly been used after all. However I suggest liaising with the Smithsonian who may want it for their "Conservatives Try Humour- An Epic Fail Throughout History" exhibition.

I know this is slightly off topic, but John McCain showed a lot more class in defeat that Romney, with his sniveling explanation that Obama won because he gave people stuff. Too bad McCain and Graham are such gutless punks on Benghazi.

Lost in all the sexytime talk where McCain was making sweet love to his favorite partner -- the idiot media -- and Barry was protecting his woman there's a little something most people are missing: What she said was almost perfectly correct and sounds perfectly true even now.

Seriously, why aren't they applauding a president who demands he be held accountable for the actions of the Exec branch? I thought the GOP was the party that LOVED taking responsibility. I really worry about them; they seem to be pathologically unaware that they are incoherent.

Lindsey Graham is trying to have it both ways, claiming that he is totes super mad at Barack Obama for betraying democracy but that it doesn't change the fact that Susan Rice is history's greatest monster.

Obama promised people "stuff" like health care, education, assistance after a natural disaster, a living wage... and Rmoney promised his people "stuff" like no taxes for millionaires and billionaires and corporations, no regulations for millionaires and billionaires and corporations, more trillion-dollar bailouts for millionaires and billionaires and corporations, and much MUCH more! Too bad there are more Regular Americans than there are millionaires and billionaires and corporations.

Well, it is the burp! brainchild of Tucker Carlson, after all. I'm sure he considers it clever, although he's very unlikely to have considered all the ways in which that name could be parodied. M'self, I prefer the "Daily Cholera," which seems to define its editorial policy....

In the Winglish dialect, it's customary to deliberately mispronounce/spell a word, or to use the word "literally" in a statement like that. This indicates that you are using Winglish "not subject to the rules of arithmetic" numbers rather than English ones.

So in this context the more correct spelling would be "ah hunnerd". "ah hunnerd" (aka "LITERALLY a 100") would be similar to "40 days" in Christianity, or "10,000 things" in Taoism. It's not really meant to refer to the number which is smaller than 101 and bigger than 99.

To suggest they need a vacation is to also suggest that what they are doing constitutes work, a presumption with which I would take exception. This is just whining in print form. These professional layabouts wouldn't recognize work if it cock-punched them.

Perhaps someone else has noted that their newfound love of feminism--which they imagine consists of letting people kick the shit out of Susan Rice so she gets what she deserves for daring to get out of the kitchen, is nicely marked in the Republican party's refusal to reauthorize the violence against women act. I doubt if they will reauthorize until the act officially instigates violence against women and calls it "feminism." At that point they will all sign on.

Only people who were born after 1980. It was a more common term in the 60s and 70s as it had only recently been discovered and anthropology was very exciting to the public at the time. Lots of TV programs..

You might be amazed at what people know of even without higher degrees.

Given that they're so refreshingly outraged over intelligence failures that get Americans killed, maybe someone can tell McCain and Graham to pretend Susan Rice was the National Security Advisor who helped the president ignore "Bin Laden determined to attack inside United States," so naturally she should be promoted to SoS.

Okay, so VAWA is tangential to my area of expertise, and all year I've been saying that OF COURSE we'll get it reauthorized, it happened without issue in 2006 and Republicans haven't gotten THAT crazy. So realizing it's November and it still hasn't happened yet has been a huge bucket of cold water dumped right on my head.

Come come, Ms. Willow... nothing builds character like having to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps without help from a sloth-promoting federal government, working two or three jobs because one of them isn't enough to get by on, all while overcoming the natural advantages that the already wealthy have in access to quality health care, education, and the network of similarly situated privileged contacts to help a body along. No one knows this deeper in his bones than Son-Of-The-Soil, Regular Guy Mitt Romney, and it's ever so unfortunate that now, since his tragic loss, we will never learn the salutary benefits of hard labor, and the freedom that comes with it.

Why, yes... it's called "The Paper Bag Test", although she would become an instant right wing heroine if she'd just come clean admit that she lied to the country because Obama's Chicago thugs were holding her children in a secure, undisclosed location...

"I think this sort of thinking is endemic to how the conservative movement thinks about racism. For them it isn't an actual force, but a rhetorical device for disarming your opponents. So one does not call Robert Weissberg racist and question his ties to National Review because one seeks to stamp out racism, but because one hopes to secure the White House for Democrats. Or some such. Even if you have a record of calling out bigotry voiced by people deemed to be "on your team," it doesn't much matter because there's no real belief in it existing to begin with."

Sexism and racism are just seen as political tools or cards to be played in an argument, not actual challenges people face.

Let us stipulate for a moment that the spokesperson in question had been male and Obama had NOT defended him. He would then be accused of shirking his responsibility, not understanding where the buck stopped, being a "fake president" and so on.

The real crime here is presidentin' while black. If the wingnuts are going to feign outrage no matter what he does, there's no reason to expect them to have any kind of an impact, except upon their own already deluded followers.

I don't think it was as much as two weeks. He gave an ok concession speech that rises in one's estimation after seeing Romney's, but he was right back on the talk shows bitching about Obama within a week of coming back to Washington. If that was more than two weeks after losing it was probably because he was chained up in a closet somewhere cutting bits off of life sized Obama and Palin dolls while Megan and Cuntry first held the door closed.

I just can't get over this. Obama is a chauvinist for recognizing that these idiots are using Rice as a means to attack him indirectly, but when John McCain calls her "unqualified" and "not too bright" it obviously makes him a staunch feminist in Powers' book.

That's cute. I remember when some hack from Newsweek, back around the time of the second Intifada, was saying that if his audience thought that Palestinian kids were "unarmed," he could throw a brick at them and see if they really thought so. Someone in the audience stood up and said, OK, but then we'll retaliate by shooting at you with an attack fighter jet. (This was before the days of Predator drones.)

"a president who demands he be held accountable for the actions of the Exec branch" - I think he takes responsibility but not the blame. (Some here may be old enough to remember where I got that.) And does that mean he's ready to be held accountable for, oh, I don't know, violating the War Powers Act or killing American citizens without due process?

That was pretty evident in the last election, and it results in a lot of breathtaking projection. They were already working the line that Obama was a sexist. Why? Because Hillary was a woman and Sarah Palin was a woman and Obama said something about lipstick and that lady got a backwards B cut into her face shut up yes she did. And they knew that Obama wouldn't shoot back that his opponents were all racist, because you just don't. Nice plan.

How did I miss this brilliant post? I would like to daub myself with mud, stick a few sticks through my nose, and build a model airplane and radio out of coconuts and pandanus leaf while praying to this comment to drop me some army meals.

Obviously, you're not old enough to remember that "responsibility" and "accountability" lost all meaning decades ago. Not to mention "transparency". Luckily, we still have "blame", which can be shared by everyone.

I was born in '71 and learned the term from a sci-fi novel in the early eighties. I forget the title. The plot involved an elaborate live RPG with players and actors. The actors played zombies, witchdoctors and so on, in a setting with "cargo cult" themes, among others. On top of all this was a murder mystery that worked itself out as the players attempted to complete their adventure under pseudo-real duress with actual killings added to the mix.

It seemed like a good book at the time; I'd like to find it again and see how it fares many years later.

Typical sexist liberals! Mind you, what do you expect after all their nanny-state whining about the so-called invasive procedure of wanding a woman's **** to see if she 'deserves' to be allowed to kill an innocent child - I mean have a legal abortion.

Don't forget he also promised himself and his family an elimination of their tax liability when the Ryan budget "zeroed out" capital gains taxes. Romney had an 13 million dollar bet on this and he is taking that defeat badly